not ntc 2013-12

mo 11 no 13

Just off the A12 by the B1389 junction near Witham is a coffee stall where lorry driver food and smart rejoinders are served from a very clean van. For what seems like the 20 years we've been asking for a strong coffee there's been a poster advertising eggs and cheese starting Vegetarian? Weird? Gay? The day we finally man upped to photograph it the sign had changed ... #Essex eh?

th 31 oc 13

The last surviving aborigine world war II combatant in the state of Victoria Australia Bill Edwards died earlier this month, he was buried in the Framlingham Australia cemetery near where he grew up. In Framlingham Suffolk this weekend the White Horse is having the first of regular table top sales.

tu 6 Aug2013

Not unreasonable to assume road works imminent on the A12 just south of Witham at the B1389 junction as multiple average speed cameras have appeared.

th 27 Jun2013

♫We looked Barley Brigg Morris up on the web and they seemed to be from Yorkshire, Blimey we thought they've come a long way . When they announced themselves on the Market Hill Framlingham Thursday night they're from Yoxford ... pix on Facebook.

we 26 Jun2013

♫Not surprisingly Gretchen Peters was pitch perfect last night inGreat Bardfield Essex, slightly surprising as just a trio with husband Barry Walsh, enigmatic Canadian Christine Bougie and slightly quirky instrumentation they could get such a driving sound. A moist eye with happiness evening was made even more special when we got to ask support act Ben Glover about his chum Mary Gauthier ... and on the way home we saw a badger crossing the A120.

th 30 May2013

The constabulary point out that the Suffolk show will have its usual effect upon the Seven Hills junction of the A12/A14 today and as it isn't in Suffolk they haven't pointed out that Colchester town centre will be problematical this afternoon and tonight because of the criterium ... that's a bike race, it visits Ipswich Friday 14th next month.

su 28 Apr2013

In the late 1980s Earl Soham Brewery created a pub out of a derelict furniture repository in Cambridge, the building had been built to service the trams of a company that went bust before it had even started trading so ESB called the pub The Tram Depot. Our first visit was last weekend for the Love Bout after party and drank a pint of Everards' Tiger in memory of track racing at Saffron Lane, Leicester.

th 21 Mar2013

Saturday in Oxford we admired the Severn Torrent's uniforms and asked a jammer if the uniform had any padding No, it's all woman. Severn followed in the west country tradition set by Wilts and despite being a short handed 11 against 14 steadily moved away ... more roller derby

fr 8 Mar2013

♫Greg Butler is really committed to analogue. For his Cambridge 105 radio show yesterday he humped in and out a load of gear, dutifully kept changing cartridges to match the disc, used a kitchen sponge to drip soapy water on to some crackly vinyl whilst it played (audibly quietening the surface noise), and played a Rutles transfer on a cylinder ... I will repeat that ... on a cylinder. His guest John Halsey is now landlord of the Cambridge Castle Inn but 1988(ish)-1995 John was the StradbrokeQueens' landlord and he's also had a long career as a drummer including Beatles parody the Rutles, Viv Stanshall, lots of others and is effectively the only remaining member of Patto a 1970s band we still admire and enjoy.

su 10 Feb2013

We would have liked to be at the Snape Maltings yesterday for the ♫singalong♫ Rocky Horror Show but we went to this in Oakham instead.

tu 5 Feb2013

WiltshireRoller Derby clearly hadn't heard of the rule that a good big 'un will always beat a good little 'un.

There's a bit of what was the A11 north of Bishop's Stortford that for competitive cyclists is the E1 time trial course. As a teenager we raced it's neither sporting nor drag strip rolling route through Essex and Cambridgeshire. Maybe 25 years later we returned to spectate our nephew compete in the national junior (under 18) 25 mile championship. Time may have gilded the memory but we recall he came something like eighth in a time that would have put him in the adult elite twenty years earlier.

On our spectators' side of the road the verge was wide enough to have bushes and teensy trees amongst which a tramp lived. He'd decorated his camp with small chipped plaster figures of dogs. The tramp appeared, his face was heavily streaked with dirt and he was pushing a wheelbarrow with a small dog in it. We said Good Morning and he flashed an enormous smile made more gleaming by the contrast with his filthy face, presumably passers by mostly pretended he didn't exist.

Maybe we should all try to acknowledge estate agents, town councillors, management consultants and the like because after all they are our fellows ... sort of.

th 4 Oct2012

Things to do this Saturday include John Cooper Clarke at the Ipswich Corn Exchange (as we think he lives near Colchester he may even not be late), Framlingham Writers will be reading their work in the library and the Fat Band with Polly Gibbons and traditional hog roast at the Stratford St Andrew Riverside Centre.

th 30 Aug2012

Yesterday we went to Hackney town hall near Chelmsford for the Paralympic flame visit, no bunting but lots of security, barriers and not a lot else. We walked the wrong way along the flame's route ... not a lot. We stood by a useful looking traffic island ... bloody Olympics!

mo 20 Aug2012

Not surprisingly Saturday the hottest day of the year so far in the Bunyan Sports Centre Bedford the listless crowd for The Seabourne Menace derby didn't really get in to it but that didn't stop highly committed skating and the bloke coaches of the MK Concrete Cows v Hertfordshire ... more roller derby

The Romsey Town Rollerbillies had their first home bout Saturday in a large Cambridge sports hall on the first floor?! and universally painted a green which though it complimented the Billies uniform gave everything an ... more at roller derby

sa 10 Mar2012

The Meres Leisure Centre is a cold war concrete bunker set in a barren industrial wilderness on the outskirts of Grantham where you have to pay for more than two sachets of salt with your chips, living proof that councils can't do fun ... but by some oversight last ... more at roller derby

we 7 Mar2012

Our snap of Milton Keynes Concrete Cow Kim 'Kapow' Powell and a baby at Foul Portents in Grantham is derbylife.com's pic of the day.

mo 13 Feb2012

Like cycle speedway (we saw it for the first time in Norwich just a few years back) it's taken us a lifetime to get round to seeing cycle polo and then it was in Cambridge and we couldn't give it much attention. In cycle polo you have to make a penalty dash if you put your foot down so surprising that single freewheel is favoured these days rather than fixed, apparently it makes a long stretch easier.

sa 11 Feb2012

In the way of the working man (remember bendy toys on the front of dustcarts?) a warehouse in Sackers scrap yard Great Blakenham has been decorated with metal

pub signs. They're all that once good brewer Greene King (including a rather gay Green Man but with a big stick), except the Yeldham Stone & Faggot which we think must be Little Yeldham over the border west of Sudbury.

we 1 Feb2012

In a chilly Great Blakenham this afternoon people in dayglo were standing around looking at other people in dayglo trying to look interested in a crate of knives as the conclusion of the constabulary's Bin A Blade amnesty. You can't help wonder if some people got it as included were keys, forks, and scissors ... but also blades it's comforting to know aren't on the street anymore, especially if like Holly Watson you lost your brother to knife crime.

we 18 Jan2012

We were back in Cambridge Sunday, this time to shoot the Billies for Leadjammer magazine and to see the Billies play choochoos.

sa 14 Jan2012

♫ With a sound like a charging rhinoceros bass guitarist Jack Bruce is going out on the road again including the Cambridge Corn Exchange in March. In his BIG blues band is trombonist Winston Rollins ... who looks to us suspiciously like Dennis Rollins.

th 12 Jan2012

Last Sunday we travelled to Cambridge to see hosts the Romsey Town Rollerbillies scrimmage against the MK Concrete Cows and it was well worth the effort.